Thursday, October 8, 2009

My Pet Peeve

Recently, one of my kids teachers got engaged. Mazel Tov, Yaaay!

I wonder if she will finish out the year. Generally in these situations, the guy is learning, and he certainly can't be expected to learn anywhere other than where he wants to learn, despite the fact that this girl should have a responsibility to the kids, the school, and the parents who now have to deal with the school scrambling to find a replacement, at a time when most people already have jobs.

I think it's worse in the younger grades, when the kids finally get used to a teacher, and YANK! She's gone, and now there's someone new to acclimate to, and learn how to deal with, and get to know all over again.

I'm curious why no one in the school system thinks this is important, and none of the Rebbeim in the kollelim think the greater community should be respected enough to either have the woman commute, or just learn elsewhere until she is finish her RESPONSIBILTY.

I can't even convey (even if I use all CAPS!) how upset this makes me, and that everyone just lets it happen as if becoming a teacher is no greater responsibility or commitment or job than any other. Because that's what it boils down to I guess. It must be that it's just a job. The fact that often people's future rest upon how good you are at it, or that you stick it out? I guess they don't teach that in Seminary.

7 comments:

G6 said...

Here, Here!!!
These young women should be asked to sign contracts at the beginning of the year and honor them.
If they are not prepared to do that, then so be it. The job can go to someone else.
I've had children lose teachers three years in a row.
It disrupts the education incredibly.
The teacher is totally distracted pre-engagement.
Once engaged she becomes a Bridosapien.
Once married - she's gone.
And the poor kids never know what hit 'em.

Doobie said...

This is also a huge pet peeve of mine. In out school they ask that the girls try not to get engaged or at least married before January. But of course they would never actually hold anyone to that. My daughter had a teacher get married 2 weeks after Pesach and then leave. I can't imagine that a young bochur's learning is so elevated during his engagement and the first 5 weeks of his marriage that he couldn't let her finish out her commitment. They got a replacement who was more like a subsitute for the last 7 weeks or so and I think it ended the year on a very sour note.
It just really seems that it is so easy to leave a teaching job!

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Anonymous said...

u blasphemers arent macshiv torah and the work young men put into it

FBB said...

Firstly, it's hard to take a comment about work seriously from someone who can't be bothered to use the first two letters of the word "you."

Secondly, of course the work and the preparation that these girls put into their jobs (TO TEACH TORAH!!!!) means nothing. Because you know, they're girls, and their job in life is to bake cookies for their brothers when they come home from Yeshiva at night(quoted from a speech a an eight grade GIRLS graduation, by a well known Rabbi...heard it with my own ears).

There's something wrong with a society that thinks a whole segment of it's population (the one most responsible for raising future generations) will be happy to practice religion vicariously through their male counterparts. There are plenty of things women cannot/don't need to do. The rest does not need to be diminished by people who just call everything they do holy, and in reality are just perpetrators of desecrating God's name with an ego centric outlook that is wrapped in pseudo-religion.

FIL said...

Anonymous - Why do you consider it blasphemy to point out that some people ready to go into kollel are selfish, inconsiderate, arrogant and irresponsible spoiled brats.

The fact that you comment anonymously adds "cowardly" to the above list.

Anonymous said...

I went through this so many times when my girls were small.

Even a teacher with a contract was unlikely to finish the year. Once, a teacher volunteered to commute 100 miles each way from Lakewood to the school. The principal let her out of the contract, knowing that fighting bad weather and traffic jams would be a losing battle.

And what about the newlywed teachers (often commuting from Lakewood) who gets morning sickness so bad that they require a long-term substitute to finish out the year?